With no one to back it up, murder case collapses fast

At least two people watched the fatal beating of Stafford Tureaud Jr. unfold on a 7th Ward street in daylight on Sept. 12.

In what police characterized as a drug deal gone awry, Tureaud, 49, was walking toward his car in the 2300 block of Touro Street when a green Chevrolet Malibu with tinted windows pulled up. Two men, thought to be in their late teens, got out and began to argue with him.

They pounced seconds later, a witness told police, punching Tureaud's head and body. One of the assailants repeatedly hit Tureaud with a wooden stick. A second witness jumped in to stop the attack, sending the two culprits back into the Malibu and south on Touro, according to the police report.

Tureaud, a contractor, was the son of Stafford Tureaud Sr., a former member of the Sewerage & Water Board who had died of a heart attack 10 days earlier.

According to the coroner's office, the younger Tureaud had cocaine in his system when he died. He had one conviction on his record, for carrying a concealed weapon in 1999.

An anonymous call to the city's Crimestoppers hotline, which offers cash for information that leads to arrests, led police to pick up Raphael Jimerson, 17, at his home within five days of the attack. But after a quick arrest, the case went nowhere.

Tureaud's killing is among at least two dozen cases from 2003 stymied because witnesses who stepped forward at first, giving police enough information to make an arrest, later backed out.

Jimerson, booked with capital murder, was never formally charged. No other suspects have been arrested.

Tureaud, who graduated from Redemptorist High School and had a son, daughter and stepdaughter, died of a brain hemorrhage at Charity Hospital the morning after the beating. He was unable to speak with the police officer who visited him soon after the attack.